


Job Security

by Senri



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:57:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1627916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senri/pseuds/Senri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're all weapons by now, right?  To be honed, turned, pointed in the right direction.  Jake's gotten good at that kind of thing.  Maybe he was a better person before he got like that, but right now, he's the person they need.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Job Security

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and apologies for failing to make this story really a pairing story - I'm more of a gen ficcer than a pairing ficcer, I'm afraid. Hopefully it'll be satisfactory anyway.  
> Also, the story is set after book 43, the second book in which Taylor appeared. Um, I hope you got that far, but either way this story will probably make sense.  
> And sorry for not using the proper thought-speech carrots. Formatting did not like it.
> 
> Written for sweetestdrain

 

 

Certain reliabilities, certain things that seemed constant, back when life was normal - they melt and warp so easily now, at the slightest touch of the bizarre, they shrivel and blacken at any hint of heat, melt into unrecognizability like flesh sliding from its familiar form into something strange and foreign. Something new.

Tobias ruffles his feathers, clacks his hooked beak - once lips. Opens his wings, catches the breeze. Takes to the air.

They've all changed. Grown up, maybe, is a better term. Grown up in a way even most adults aren't, and they've all realized just how much they're worth to each other. They'd all rely on each other in a fight. They'd give each other their backs. They'd all lean on each other. They'd all use each other and get used, if it was for the best. Well, he says them, but he means one person - he'd call out anyone else on this team who tried. And no one else would try, not even Marco, who's sometimes a jerk but still someone he'd die for. Like he'd die and live and fight on for all of them. But there's just one person he trusts enough to use him, and use him right. Because they're all weapons by now, right? To be honed, turned, pointed in the right direction. 

Jake's gotten good at that kind of thing. Maybe he was a better person before he got like that, but right now, he's the person they need.

Tobias watches his shadow move over asphalt and high-rises. When the ground is far, even to his hawk eyes, he's just a dot sliding over the slightly-wrinkled earth. When he flies over high places, rooftops, he can discern his silhouette: the broad, round wings, the rounded tail. Red-tailed hawk, buteo jamaicensis. What he is, and by now, maybe he doesn't regret it so much. He's learned to endure what he has to endure, finally. Do what a warrior has to do. Accept sacrifices and make them.

His meadow is getting overgrown. It does that, this time of year: the grass gets tall and dry, scrubby and yellowed, sways in every breeze, when the little prey animals rustle through it. The flowers dry up for the season. They're in the desert; the place gets cold, nights. Tobias ruffs his feathers up and waits out the owls and the dark.

Jake is leaning under his favorite tree, eating black liquorices with a slow and patient expression.

Tobias comes in for the landing, flaring his wings and tail. Jake crumples the wax paper in his hand. Black rims of candy are still visible, between and capping his teeth; he sticks his thumb in his mouth and picks at the gunk with his thumbnail. If anyone sees them like this they're in trouble. But no one's around for a good long ways.

Rachel would ask him to demorph so they could walk together. Jake sticks the paper in his pocket and digs his wet hand through his hair. His bangs are long, they fall back into his eyes right away, except for a few strands which stay back, stuck with saliva.

"Let's talk," he says. 

{Okay,} Tobias says. 

Jake walks. Tobias leaps and flaps from tree to tree. It's more tiring than soaring, but he gets by. He'd draw blood riding on Jake's shoulder anyway, and they're all tired, so fair's fair.

Under the trees Jake looks more tired than usual. The skin around his eyes is dark and almost crinkled-looking, like the skin of an old man, or a lizard. He has dark circles under his eyes. He scuffs through the underbrush with his hands in his pockets, and for all that he started the conversation he doesn't look like he's in the mood to say much. Tobias wonders if he'll be the one to break the silence, or if he should trust his leader this much farther.

In the end, Jake doesn't disappoint him - Jake never disappoints. Start with six, end with six, that's the goal, isn't it? Win. Stay alive. Keep his soldiers alive.

"So how are you holding up?" his leader says, kicking dried leaves up in slither-hissing clouds and stuffing his hands into his pockets. Tobias takes off from the branch he's perched on, glides down to a lower spot, so he can almost look Jake in the eye.

{Don't worry about it. You did what you had to do.}

"It was fishy." Jake looks down. "Cassie felt it. We went with it anyway."

{I said yes. I pushed for it. It was my decision, all right?}

"I pushed for it too. If I'd thought about it more-"

{It turned out okay.} Tobias bates, resettles. It's easier to let the hawk do these kinds of things, and besides, he's restless anyway. Worried, sick of talking about this - Taylor, crawling in the tunnel behind him, flesh soft and tempting, her words oily, unctuous, sliding soft and slow into his brain -

"If Cassie hadn't been there," Jake shakes his head. "If you'd... I don't know."

{There's no point in thinking about it. We got out, right?}

"Too close. Way, way, way too freaking close." His shoulders hunch up and then relax down again. "If we had close calls like that every time..."

{We'd still be doing it.} Tobias clenches his talons on the branch.

Jake doesn't say anything to that. But it's the truth, and they both know it. They'd keep on, somehow.

"Haven't seen you as you much," Jake says, when he's up to talking again.

{No,} Tobias agrees. {Well, it's not like me being human is really practical for doing stuff. People would notice a barefoot kid in bike shorts and a lycra top staking out the local Mickey D's.}

"I guess." Jake looks at him with dark, serious eyes. Tobias looks back. When he sees things close, his pupils contract into pinpricks. When he looks at things far away they get big as coins. Every detail, the worn spots on Jake's jeans, the picked, raw skin around his fingernails, the stubble where he missed a spot shaving that morning. Jake, Jake, Jake. Prince Jake. The guy who put out little plastic containers full of overcooked veggies and burger when Tobias still couldn't bring himself to eat it raw. The guy who called them "his team" once and denies his title otherwise. The guy who's got it in him to take these calculated risks, the guy keeping the team together, the guy who'll choose the piece - the person - the appendage - if one day it becomes necessary - to amputate.

The guy who got him into this, in a way. The guy who'll, hopefully, bring him out of it.

Jake puts his face into his hands. Tobias watches him dig at his scalp with blunt, strong fingers. His nails are chewed.

Jake takes his face out of his hands. Pinches the bridge of his nose. His eyes turn down. Tobias watches him for a while.

"It's gonna get a lot worse," he says. "Before we get any better."

{You'll pull it off.}

"I gotta."

{If you pull it off, they'll have to canonize you.} Saint Jake. Would he look good in a monk's robe?

Jake shakes his head and laughs. It's a low, jumping, incredibly sad noise, and it just pours out of him. "Don't know if that's allowed," he says. "Given that I'm Jewish already. Besides, by the time it's all said and done... who knows if I'll be good enough for it anyway?"

{Yeah,} Tobias says eventually. {Well... we had to pull it off somehow, right? Somebody has to do it.}

The smile he gets for that isn't the normal one, that creeps out warm and slow and then hides away again. It slices into Jake's face, makes him look bitter and kind of angry, a little like Marco, a little like Rachel.

"Just doing my job," he says, feeling the words out slow and sarcastic. "Yeah, I know. That's what we all say."

{Hey, being an Animorph has never not sucked. We don't have job security and the only insurance is death.}

Jake laughs. That look on his face. The smile of a guy who knows he's not gonna like what he's gonna have to do. Tobias rearranges his wings and cocks his head, watching.

What the hell - he's still got faith. In the hands of God, or Jake. At this point - same difference.

If he has to be used, he'll be used. Jake will try his best, and do it right.

 


End file.
